Drove My Model 3 LR 150 Miles in a Blizzard: It Did GREAT

Thought I would share my thoughts on how well my Model 3 did driving in last weeks Nor'Easter. Ive always loved driving in the snowiest conditions and was waiting for the right time to try my new EV out. It's great to know, that if you HAVE to do it, that the vehicle can handle it.

Pros:
1 - When combined with Michelin X-Ice Snow Winter tires, I truly felt unstoppable. The amount of grip these tires have is unbelievable when combined with the Tesla AWD system. Cornering, you could feel a bit of the weight and it would sometimes understeer a little bit if you were going excessively fast, but other than that this is the best handling vehicle I've ever driven in the snow. Packed down snow on the highway felt as if it wasnt ever there. 0-60 times up a snowy onramp were still in the 10 second range. Crazy

2. I love being able to preheat cabin and being able to just floor it, if needed, when its still "cold." No more worrying about cold/thick oil temperatures.

3. Regen Braking seemed very strong and consistent, even when the snow got very slick. Only a small handful of times did it "stutter" when the conditions were really bad. This is more related to tires than the vehicle I feel. However, when the tires DID lose grip, the software knew to pull back the intensity of the regen to not create a unnecessary skid.

4. No supercharging issues in a blizzard to report

5. No heat pump issues, Inside was so warm, we had to take out winter coats off.

Cons:
1. Watts/Mile in these conditions, 15f and 50mph blowing snow, were excessively high. The highest I have ever seen. I believe I was averaging over 500-550+ at times. Total range on my LR would be around 150 miles. Not necessarily the fault of the car, but more reality with living with an EV. I would still say the vast majority of people still commute less than 150 miles per day, AND would be home anyway in these conditions.

2. The wipers... they just aren't great. When combined with my cheap windshield washer fluid, my wipers COMPLETELY froze to the lower cowl on the windshield. I believe there are a few reasons to this.
a. The wipers sit below the cowl and the windshield defroster does not blow warm air on that part of the windshield.
b. slushy frozen wiper fluid easily piled up and created a bad situation.

 

[GtiMart]

I'm sure insulating the cabin will help, if only a little bit, by needing less heat produced in the cabin to stay comfortable. You can look at those that run only seat heaters instead of heat to save energy as a kind of theoretical maximum. It's not going to be huge. If you saved 1kW (and I think it would be less than that) out of the say 18-20kW you need to sustain 120kph, that would only be 5-6% of the total energy spent.

When the battery insulation thing became available, a few people asked for real efficiency tests. I'm not aware that any have really been done. Seems to me, and I believe was also supported by others, that insulating the pipes that run the glycol would be the most important part. I have that on my list of things I might do to my car eventually (just the pipes) for the fun of it.

In any case, I see this more as an energy saver for the preheating (before you leave), or conditioning for a supercharger. I'm not sure in normal driving you'd gain that much. In the cold, I think the worst offender is the density of the air you have to drive through, plus heating the cabin, not the temperature of the battery.